


a hundred roots silently drinking

by feralphoenix



Series: we were faster on our feet [5]
Category: Undertale (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Anxiety, Autistic Frisk, Borderline Personality Disorder, Don't copy to another site, Food Issues, Hoarding, Other, Polyamory, Post-Canon, Rosh HaShana | Jewish New Year, Spoilers - Undertale Pacifist Route, Yom Kippur | Atonement Day, backsliding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-18
Updated: 2020-01-18
Packaged: 2021-02-27 12:47:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,321
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22297297
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/feralphoenix/pseuds/feralphoenix
Summary: Frisk prepares to fast for Yom Kippur, which will definitely be a complete non-event and go totally smoothly, any and all tragic backstory notwithstanding, and no one will have any sort of cause for concern.
Relationships: Chara/Asriel Dreemurr/Frisk
Series: we were faster on our feet [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1590652
Comments: 26
Kudos: 57





	a hundred roots silently drinking

**Author's Note:**

> _(thank goodness for all the things you are not_ – my own thoughts: a black rainbow–)

Toriel utterly outdoes herself on Rosh Hashanah. You wanted to at _least_ help her out, but she tsked at you warmly and you were—to borrow Chara’s turn of phrase—ignominiously relegated to merely making the soup and potatoes and side dishes with Asriel (and Chara chopping vegetables) instead.

“I will teach you how to do this next year, my child,” Toriel said, beaming at you. “But for this year, at least—this is the first time you will be celebrating your High Holy Days with your new temple community, is it not? So I would like to treat you, just this once.”

What were you supposed to say to that? So you restrained yourself to watching longingly around the curve of her bicep while she knitted the pie crust.

As expected, your foster mother is still the supreme overlord of pastry: The pie comes out perfect, a monument of golden brown, crust glazed and coated in cinnamon and those gigantic picturesque crystals of sugar. The filling is made of at least three different kinds of apples and thick with notes of maple and honey. And atop this, Toriel has even prepared a tureen of warm honey to drizzle over pie slices.

Everyone eats entirely too much of everything, and Toriel cuts Asriel and Chara off from having more than one slice each of pie to keep them from getting sick—but to you and you alone she says, “Oh, but you may have a second, just this once. After all, you’re going to be fasting soon, so you may as well eat a little extra now so you’ll have energy saved up.”

“There’s over a week to go until then,” Chara complains. “If Frisk gets extra pie, we should _all_ get extra pie.”

 _That’s okay,_ you say, something sour and prickly at the nape of your neck. _I’ll just save mine for later._

One of the worst things you ever did in your life, you did when you were nine years old. Normally you try very hard to not think about this, but Yom Kippur is very soon and it’s a day for thinking about your wrongdoings and resolving to repent for them or at least do better next time. Maybe that’s the reason you can’t quite keep it off your mind, lately.

So.

It was probably one of those times when your parents told you to wait for them and then just forgot about you because they were too busy partying away any possible source of contention. A lot of your memory is foggy, because you were left alone so much the incidents all blur together—and because you were always so _hungry._

Family breakfasts and dinners together had dropped off sometime around when you were six or seven, any sort of cooked home meal tapered off before you were eight, and the pantries and refrigerator grew increasingly barren the more your parents ate out and spent nights in motels rather than come home and deal with you. When there _was_ food you were never sure if you’d provoke their anger by taking too much of it for yourself, so you squirreled little bits of anything that might keep away in stashes around the house where you could get it later.

You were usually good at not wearing the stashes too thin but you could never really tell when your parents would bother to restock. So on that day when you were left to loiter at the convenience store, your limbs were loose and your head was floaty and you were so hungry you’d stopped feeling it at all, you only felt tired. And with every step you took—had to keep moving or your feet would start to ache in your too-small shoes—there was the pounding knowledge at the base of your forehead that you were almost out of saved scraps. Eat your last saltine packet to take the edge off the misery and you might not have anything else to eat all weekend.

Most clearly out of everything that day you remember standing in front of a shelf lined with jars and jars of chocolate hazelnut butter. You’d never eaten it before but you liked peanut butter and hazelnuts and chocolate and your stomach felt crumpled inside you, withered to the size of your fist. There were so many jars and you were so hungry.

The jars weren’t so very large but they were still big enough that one couldn’t fit in your pocket and would have stuck out horribly beneath your shirt. So you just carried it quietly in your hand and you walked to the automatic doors when the cashier person wasn’t looking, and you ferried it from hand to hand around the scanners and you left and no one caught you, not the convenience store workers, not the other customers, not the people walking by on the street, not your parents.

It took you months to actually eat it all—you had tiny, tiny spoonfuls or pinches of it on days when you were starving or had gotten so little sugar that you could barely think. It’s not an exaggeration to say that the single jar of hazelnut butter probably saved your life.

But you still _stole_ it.

You’ve gone shopping in the city before, with Toriel or with Sans or Papyrus—you’ve passed that convenience store more than once. And—you _have_ money now. You could, you _should,_ go inside and pay them what you should have back then. You just… it’s been so long, you don’t know what you could possibly say. Whoever got in trouble for the missing stock five whole _years_ ago probably doesn’t even work there anymore. What if they got fired because of you? How could you possibly track them down then, when they’re the one you need to make reparations to?

You don’t know, and it’s like dirt thick on your back where you can’t reach it to scrub it away.

At school you start saving little bits of your lunch, small enough that no one ought to notice. Some carrots, a cupcake, a little bag of pretzels the size of your hand. They go into your phone in a password-protected box, under a folder you labeled FASTING.

At home Toriel keeps offering you second helpings of dessert and tutting worriedly at you, no matter how loudly Asriel complains that shouldn’t he merit extra dessert too especially with how he’s _growing_ or how much Chara rolls their eyes and protests that it isn’t even _that_ big a deal, you’ll be missing two meals and can just eat a big dinner the day of. You smile and accept the extra helpings and tell her that you’re going to save them for later when you feel less full, and into your phone they go.

At least, you _thought_ no one was going to notice, but then one day at lunch Suzy is pointing at your tray and saying “If you’re not gonna eat that, you could at _least_ give it to me.”

You were so sure of your ability to be furtive that you never even tried to compose a potential excuse to feed your classmates. So you blank out for a good half a minute or so, staring up at her—she’s been sprouting up like a corn stalk compared to the rest of you, she’s almost a full head taller than Asriel, who’s now got a definite gap between you and Chara.

 _I am going to eat it,_ you manage at last. MK and Asriel and Chara have all started to look at you too; great. _Just not right now._

“Same difference,” Suzy says, sulking. “You have plenty of other stuff to eat _not right now._ I don’t have anything else to eat NOW, when I’m like… actually hungry. So gimme.”

 _“No,”_ you blurt out loud—and when you blurt this out loud it just happens to be one of those lulls in the conversation and _everyone_ hears it and suddenly what seems like EVERY PERSON IN THE CAFETERIA is staring right at you.

“What the _fuck,”_ Suzy grumbles. (“Language!” some teacher calls from the side of the room, to which Suzy pays no mind.) “It’s not the end of the world or anything.”

“They still said no, man,” MK says, frowning at her from around you. “You don’t have to be a jerk about it.”

“I’m NOT!” Suzy protests, hands flung wide. She came to school with her hair nicely combed today but now it’s falling into her eyes. “I was just _asking!”_

“You can have my celery sticks if you want,” Asriel volunteers, holding the untouched baggie out at her.

“You’re just tryin’ to avoid eating those in a way your mom’s not gonna find out,” Suzy says, shrewd.

“Are you hungry or not?” Asriel says, still waving the celery at her threateningly.

“How about this: You get _half_ of Ree’s celery and the rest of mine that I haven’t eaten,” Chara pipes up dryly. Sitting across from you, they’ve been watching all of this without comment until now. “That way you still get more food and Mr. Dreemurr here still has to eat his vegetables.”

“Deal,” says Suzy.

“Don’t treat me like a little kid trying to weasel out of eating things I hate,” Asriel grouses.

“Maybe don’t act like one then,” Suzy lectures while accepting the celery.

“The strings get stuck in my teeth,” Asriel whines. “If I _wanted_ strings in my teeth I’d just go floss.”

Suzy goes on teasing Asriel as the volume in the cafeteria returns to its normal dull roar, and MK has gone back to their juice box, but Chara’s eyes are on you as you stow the rest of your lunch in your phone. Your fingers are shaking: You can’t help that. Maybe Chara will just attribute that to the argument, though.

They keep watching you all through the rest of lunch and after, and the more they stare at you the less you like the look on their face.

As an end result of all of this nonsense, you are perpetually on edge and keep getting exponentially more so. You’ve known Toriel is an incurable worrywart since your first ten minutes of getting to know her all those years ago, and you _know_ she’s come by it honestly via lots of dead kids, so you really do try not to hold it against her. But this is turning into another of those _things_ like the way she _still_ won’t let you use your set of cooking utensils without adult supervision even though you’ve been using them for literal actual _years_ without incident. Apparently the whole idea of fasting offends her I-must-feed-everyone motherly sensibilities; she hasn’t ordered you to give up on Yom Kippur but she _also_ keeps clucking over you with sad bambi eyes so obtrusive she looks like Asriel trying to sweet talk his way into something forbidden.

And to add insult to injury, you keep catching Chara and Asriel having conversations solely in the language of eyebrows. They stop whenever they see you looking, so _obviously_ they must be talking about you—and really you don’t even know why they won’t keep doing it even though they know you know. Chara and Asriel’s private eyebrow language bears zero resemblance to your and Chara’s private eye contact language, so it’s not like you could tell what they’re saying to each other _anyway._

So you try to keep your phone close at hand. Looking at all the snacks and leftovers you’ve tucked safely away into your FASTING folder slows down your racing heart as well as taking deep breaths does. There are only a few days left to go, and then you’ll spend _one_ day not eating and then it will be over and you’ll be fine, it’ll just be a thing you can mention to your therapist in passing, to say you got through it okay, you’re Recovering like a champ.

The knots your insides tie themselves into keep tightening, and it makes sleep an ordeal if you want to be honest, but once you’re back to eating everything at a meal instead of saving leftovers to practice for the fast that’ll sort itself out. In the meantime you drink water and take warm long showers or foamy baths to quiet your unhappy stomach.

Asriel ambushes you outside the bathroom door, on the night before the night before Yom Kippur. You with your innards gurgling but the rest of you all warm and content in fresh pajamas and a bathrobe, and him still in his day clothes, playing with his locket and his eyebrows peaked with concern.

“Frisk, I just wanted…” He hesitates here, mouth scrunching to one side and then the other. “Are you _sure_ you’re doing okay? You’ve been acting kinda weird lately, and I just thought… I dunno, if there’s something you’re nervous about and you want to complain, I can at least listen, or if you want to play video games or look at clothes online or watch cartoons together for a distraction we can do that too.”

He’s being kind about it, at least. _I’m fine,_ you tell him. _Honestly I’m more cranky that people keep trying to make a big deal about it. I’d be less nervous if everyone would just stop picking at it like a scab, you know?_

Asriel’s face falls, just minutely, and for a moment you feel really genuinely _bad_ for brushing him off—much worse than you’d feel if he made a big theatrical Deal out of it the way he does when he’s trying to manipulate people. Did. He’s been doing that a little bit less now than he used to in your first couple years living together.

“Oh,” is all he says out loud, and then he smiles at you, eyebrows still pinched together. “Well, I guess that’s fair. But… the offer’s still open if you decide you want to take me up on it later.”

 _Okay,_ you tell him. _I’m going to finish my homework and then go to bed, though._

“Yeah. I won’t keep you up,” Asriel replies lamely.

Footsteps up the stairs grab at your attention, and you turn to see Chara approaching. They’re holding out your phone, and your heart jumps in your chest.

“You left this on the table, Frisk,” they say, puffing. You try _very_ hard not to snatch it away too jealously. “Don’t want you to have to turn the whole house over looking for it once you noticed it was missing.”

 _Thanks,_ you tell them. There’s something about their eyes on you that you deeply dislike, but you can’t put a finger on what exactly. And if you can’t be sure it’s not just you being paranoid you shouldn’t bite them. _It’d be kind of hard to do my homework without the internet._

“Be glad Toriel isn’t up here to listen to that,” Chara says, half-smiling, “or else we’d all be in for a lecture about the need to Git Gud and what’s the point of homework if not to make sure we understand the material on our own merit.”

Asriel groans and rolls his eyes, more in the vein of his usual self than that flash of maturity he showed you a moment ago. “Homework is _dumb stupid busywork_ and looking the answers up online to fill in the points is all the dignity it _deserves.”_

 _I might be more sympathetic to Mom if it were at least fun or I needed the practice,_ you say, _but at least for tonight I just want to get it over with and go to bed._

“Big worm,” says Chara, which you have gathered is some preserved-in-amber meme from their native century. It’s honestly really cute how they’re a walking anachronism.

Still, when you’re alone at your desk, you thumb suspiciously through your boxes. The locked one _looks_ untouched—the password entry box ought to still be open if someone had tried to get in but failed, you’ve checked. And you’re fairly sure that Chara wouldn’t be able to guess _this_ password because it’s a joke from late into a puzzle game you like and which they dropped after five minutes, the leopard unable to change its spots after all. In the first place the box that holds your FASTING folder is tucked into the middle of a page of still-unused boxes and someone would have to guess the number first to be able to try to get into it at all. Everything you put inside it for safekeeping is still there, perfectly accounted for.

But you tuck the phone into the bottom of your pillowcase when you go to bed, just to make _sure_ no one will be able to get at it. You don’t need them breathing down the back of your neck and this _is_ your only stash now. Toriel shouldn’t have any reason to take it from you—you’ve been good. But you have to make sure your phone is safe and protected, or you don’t know what you’ll do.

It takes time to stop obsessing and get to sleep, tonight.

The next morning it’s Toriel’s call that wakes you:

“Frisk, would you come to the living room for me please? I think you know what it is we need to talk about.”

You ought to have given Chara more credit.

**_\-- Excerpted from the private messaging application on Frisk’s phone: --_ **

> **Rabbi?**
> 
> _Good evening, Frisk!_
> 
> _What do you need?_
> 
> **Well**
> 
> **I suppose I should begin by saying, this isn’t Frisk**
> 
> _May I ask to whom I’m speaking, then?_
> 
> **My name is Chara.**
> 
> **I’m their**
> 
> **friend.**
> 
> _Would this be the same Chara that Frisk has mentioned to me before?_
> 
> **Oh god.**
> 
> **They said they’d told you about me but I tried to put that out of my mind as best I could. You can’t have heard anything flattering.**
> 
> _Aww, I’m sure you know Frisk better than that._
> 
> _And besides, I do try to be serious in discouraging malicious gossip :)_
> 
> **Right, lashon hara and all.**
> 
> _Exactly!_
> 
> _I’m very happy to see that you’ve found ways to study even though you’re not comfortable joining a human community right now._
> 
> _But may I ask why you’re reaching out to me?_
> 
> _Especially over what I can only assume is Frisk’s phone :(_
> 
> **Unfortunately they’re the only one with your personal number, and I had to make sure I actually got to talk to you.**
> 
> **And no, I couldn’t just ask them to tell me.**
> 
> **There’s**
> 
> **reasons I have to do this behind their back. They need help. I think you’re the only one they’ll listen to.**
> 
> _Will you tell me more?_
> 
> **Thank you.**
> 
> **Frisk is very… enthusiastic about being able to properly do Yom Kippur at temple this year but I think it’s putting them in a bad place.**
> 
> **I don’t know how much they’ve said to you about it so to be succinct, the place where they lived before our foster mother took them in, they usually didn’t get enough to eat.**
> 
> **So—saying this as a person who has been there—they can be a little neurotic about food.**
> 
> _So, are you worried about their mental health over the holiday?_
> 
> **Well,**
> 
> **_[File SCREENSHOT__047832974B.png does not exist or has been deleted. Please check your Recycle Bin]_ **
> 
> **If this illicit food hoard doesn’t scream “relapse” to you, lmao,**
> 
> **(It’s just the first page in the box btw this goes on for pages and pages)**
> 
> _I can definitely see why you’re concerned._
> 
> _Why show this to me instead of Frisk’s mother or their therapist?_
> 
> **Because**
> 
> **Okay I want to believe the therapist they have right now is a good one and will know this isn’t a situation where sending Frisk to inpatient or whatever would do more good than harm but that option still smells like a cabinet full of worm cans, and Toriel**
> 
> **Our foster mother doesn’t really understand MOST human customs, she doesn’t like the idea of Yom Kippur or understand what the fasting etc is supposed to MEAN**
> 
> **And I**
> 
> **I may know the commandment that we aren’t supposed to participate in any ritual or mitzvah or whatever that endangers our health**
> 
> **But I can’t explain it in detail or talk about the alternatives the way that a rabbi can**
> 
> **And Frisk really, really likes you. They talk about you all the time at home**
> 
> **I**
> 
> **I know how much this means to them and I don’t want to ruin it, I know how that would feel, but I can’t stand back and let them do this to themself**
> 
> **They’ll listen to you.**
> 
> **Please help.**
> 
> _Thank you for reaching out to me._
> 
> _I know this must have taken a lot of courage._
> 
> **You have no idea lol I fucking hate talking to strangers**
> 
> **Shit sorry I probably shouldn’t swear**
> 
> _I don’t mind :)_
> 
> **Still.**
> 
> **But this is just how important Frisk is.**
> 
> **I’m kinda over Star Wars at this point but you’re our only hope, and so on.**
> 
> _I don’t know how much I can really promise, but I will get together as much as I can to explain things to Frisk and find accommodations for them._
> 
> _And if you ever need me for anything else… just ask Frisk to send you my number so you can talk to me on your own phone ;)_
> 
> **Maybe.**
> 
> **Thank you again.**

**_\-- End excerpt --_ **

You expect that when you get downstairs Toriel will be there with her eyebrows pinched in the middle just like her son’s with an _I’m-not-angry-just-disappointed_ lecture and probably some sort of motherly decree against going to temple tomorrow. And you know Toriel well enough after years of living with her to understand that the longer you keep her waiting the more agitated and harsher she’ll be, so instead of dawdling you wash your face and brush your teeth and stump down the stairs, phone safely in your bathrobe pocket, thinking dark thoughts about Chara and Asriel. Obviously Chara _had_ gone through your phone when you forgot it, and they’d found _something_ that—that gave you away somehow, and Asriel’s weak attempt at an intervention had doubled as Chara sending him to buy time until they were finished ferreting around. Anger is swampy and bitter in your chest, stinging like a rash. If they think that just because of your relationship, just because they’ve been in your head that gives them the right to do whatever they want—

But downstairs in the living room, it isn’t just Toriel. You freeze at the doorframe with one foot still raised, heart skipping.

“Good morning, Frisk,” says your rabbi, calm and smiling, raising a hand from where she’s sitting in the middle of the sofa. Suddenly overaware of the fact that you’re still in your pajamas, you feel your face flush, and you have to force yourself to finish taking that step into the room.

“Ms Cohen contacted me this morning,” Toriel says, looking from her to you, face all a mask of sternness, “to say that Chara has spoken to her with concerns that you’re suffering a relapse, and that she wished to come over to offer spiritual guidance and other ways to participate in your upcoming holiday.”

“Just Leah is fine,” says Rabbi Leah, all easy warmth. She’s a little like your therapist in that you’re not sure it’s possible to actually ruffle her in a way that she’ll show. You’ve thought more than once that you want to be good at being nice in the way that she’s good at being nice, seamless and professional in a way that doesn’t even look professional at first glance. “Ms Toriel, is it all right if I speak with your child alone for a little while?”

Toriel scrunches her mouth up very small in the Boss Monster equivalent of pursing one’s lips, and the rabbi holds up one hand in a small gesture for peace. “I understand that you must be very frustrated and worried for Frisk right now. But they aren’t the first member of our tribe to have a relationship with food so difficult as to make our day of atonement fraught, and so we have guidelines in place for situations like this. I think that whatever other support Frisk needs right now will go over better if we can get the immediate hurdle out of the way first.”

Toriel looks from the rabbi to you and then back again, and then sighs. “If that is what you believe is best. Oh—you will stay to have a bit of breakfast, won’t you? I will be getting things ready with the other children, in the meantime.”

She smiles. Except for the way her eyebrows are still sloped with concern for you it’s a genuine smile, and she turns on her heel and walks off towards the kitchen and leaves you standing there.

Rabbi Leah beckons to you, indicating the cushion next to her. This is _your_ house, it’s on some level absurd to feel hesitant, but all of a sudden you can feel yourself shrinking inside into a shamed child caught out at willful wrongdoing. Your steps are small and slow, and when you sit down you keep your hands in your lap, your feet curling around each other.

“Yom Kippur is not an easy holy day,” the rabbi says at last, careful. “It isn’t meant to be. But it’s also not meant to be used for self-harm, and this is why we have safeguards for the vulnerable. I think that perhaps it might be better for your health, Frisk, if you were to omit the fast from your observance tomorrow.”

 _But—_ you begin, and then rest your hands in your lap for a long while, thinking. _Skipping the fast is supposed to be for people who are SICK, or pregnant, or something. People who HAVE to eat to keep their strength up. Or people who have, like, real eating disorders. I’m healthy and I’m of age, so I’m supposed to fast._

“It may seem like a non sequitur,” Rabbi Leah says after another long pause, “but may I tell you a story about my uncle here? I promise that it’s relevant.”

 _Okay,_ you say, because you do love her Great-Uncle Chaim stories. Her grandmother’s brother was, as she tells you and has told the whole shul when you’re at temple, a virtuous man and well learned in the Torah, the sort of man who liked to study religious texts for their own sake and was sometimes called to perform the services of a rabbi even though he wasn’t one officially, just a scholar by hobby. She describes him as an Orthodox man, stern and practical, not necessarily a warm person but always a kind and fair one; he was, she says, her main inspiration for becoming a rabbi herself. You would have liked to meet him, you think, but he died over ten years ago, so enjoying Rabbi Leah’s stories is the closest you’ll ever get.

“As you might remember,” the rabbi says, “my uncle was a member of the ace spectrum community. He never married or had any blood children. But he _did_ help to foster children who were in the system, or who otherwise needed a place to stay for a while on their way to finding better homes.

“I’m sure you can already tell where this is going” (you can; your stomach is currently sinking to somewhere around your knees) “but a number of those children had come from or spent time in households where sometimes, or often, they didn’t get enough to eat. Even if that was firmly in their pasts, sometimes their experiences had still set their relationship with eating in stone. And it was difficult for them to trust that my uncle’s generosity would last. Some of them felt safer if they could stockpile food, just to know that they would have some available in case. Chara told me that’s how you’ve been feeling lately.”

The traitor. _So, what, your uncle didn’t let any of his foster kids do Yom Kippur if they were dirty hoarders like me?_ you ask, already flushing with shame as soon as your hands have shaped the signs. Your already know your therapist would tell you this isn’t a _wise_ reaction and you should dial it down by doing the opposite of your knee-jerk desires, but it’s just— _so_ hard to help it.

“Not quite,” says the rabbi, whose dark brown eyes are still gentle when you sneak a peek at her. Rabbi Leah _looks_ Jewish in a way that even Chara (who _is_ after all half white) doesn’t, with curly black hair and brown skin so light it’s only just noticeable. Chara could probably pass for white in a crowd, unless they were standing next to a white person or onlookers knew what the shape of their nose meant; you could definitely pass for gentile, since your ancestors were converts and most people think of Ashkenazim or Sephardim when they hear the word _Jew,_ most people don’t realize Jewish Asians are a thing. The rabbi couldn’t look like anything other than exactly what she is.

You’ve had big boobs since you were twelve and you first noticed you were getting chest hair on your last birthday, so you think you understand better than most how that’s equally a blessing and a curse.

“The way my uncle handled the kids in his care was this,” Rabbi Leah goes on. “If having a little bit of food stocked away helped them be less anxious, and if they could eat and replace the stock so that it wouldn’t go bad, he let them do it. And he let them check the cupboards and the refrigerator and so on as many times as they liked, just so that they would know the food he was keeping for them was real. But if they couldn’t stop themselves from saving more and more food, if it interfered with their ability to eat what they needed to nourish their bodies in the present, if their private stores sat still until they rotted, then he would step in with a therapist to make compromises.

“Even some of the first group of kids, the ones who could cope and function if they had a stash, would start spiraling during fasts. And those were the ones that my uncle, and his congregation, and his congregation’s rabbi, and the doctors who supported them, decided mustn’t fast—at least until a day came when they could avoid relapsing. And for some of those children, everyone—my uncle and his congregation and their rabbi and the doctors and even the children themselves—understood that such a day might never come.”

It makes _sense;_ of course it makes sense. But you wind your hands together in your lap and clench your teeth, because things making sense for other people is one thing, and you don’t want an easy road to take to escape.

“Frisk,” Rabbi Leah says, and almost unwillingly you look sidelong at her. “Can you explain to me in your own words what Yom Kippur is supposed to be about?”

This takes you off guard, and you have to think for a moment to come up with what you think is the right answer. _It’s a day for—for thinking about and atoning for our sins, reflecting on what we got wrong and what we can do to make it better so that we can be better people in the new year._

“That’s right,” she says, and then she’s quiet for a short while, and she says then: “I think it’s much harder to think with a clear mind about how to fix one’s mistakes and move forward when one is preoccupied being worried about food, or reliving all the fears and bad feelings that stem from going without once upon a time.”

You look down.

“Frisk,” she prods, gentler still, “I know from Chara that you’ve been saving up things to make yourself feel less worried about fasting. But… where have those things come from?”

“I didn’t—steal it,” you blurt, out loud, hot with humiliation, ready to cry. You use your voice because otherwise you’re going to pick something up and break it, and then you’ll really be in for it from Toriel. “I _didn’t._ One time—I stole when I was younger, when I was really desperate. I can’t fix that. My penance for it is not forgetting and—and never doing it again.”

“Well,” says Rabbi Leah with the lightest possible overtone of humor, “it’s a good thing to know that you haven’t broken any important commandments now that it’s no longer a question of life or death. But I mean to ask something different.

“Have you been eating your usual amount of food these past days, or has the food you’re stocking been coming out of your meals?”

You open your mouth and close it. Your hands are frozen in claws on the terrycloth of your bathrobe.

“I was afraid that might be so,” says the rabbi. “There’s only so much that I can do to help, in a situation like this. I don’t have the sort of training my uncle did. You’ll have to rely on the guidance of your counselor, and the support of your mother and your friends who love you. But I would like to suggest that for tomorrow, maybe you should reflect on how to be kinder to yourself.”

 _What does that even mean?_ you make yourself ask, prickly and peevish and too-raw.

“After the terrible wrongs that have been done to you in the past, and the struggles you’ve faced just to make it this far,” says Rabbi Leah, “the least you can do to take care of yourself is to try your best not to reopen those old wounds. If even preparing to fast has hurt you to a degree this obvious to the people near you, it is clear to me that you _must not_ fast tomorrow. If you try, you would be disregarding the commandment that we prioritize our own health and nourishment before completing rituals.” She takes a tablet out of her bag and opens her web browser, which displays chunks of text in English and Hebrew like poetry. “I’ve brought a prayer for those unable to fast for you, and we can go over it together.”

You take the tablet more for something to do with your hands than anything else, and flick through the litany. Then your eyes catch on a passage— _so, dear God, I turn to You now in sincerity and openness: / help me in the coming year to do my best in guarding my health / help us, Your children, learn how to protect our bodies from harm_ —and your vision goes blurry, your breath sharp. You bow your head and bite your lip so your tears won’t be obvious in front of your rabbi, your emotions like fistfuls of crumpled tin: You can’t remember the last time you’ve felt this fucking humiliated, but it’s shot through with relief too, petty because you’re so _hungry_ and you’ve _been_ so hungry all _week_ and fear that someone would see your shame has made you so _tired_ and here’s your ticket out of all of that, but you don’t want it; you just want to be able to go to temple and do a normal necessary thing without it being thrown in your face that you’re damaged goods and you can’t because you’re too fragile.

That you’re even having this ugly reaction at all is probably proof that Rabbi Leah is right, though, that this is too much too soon. You set the tablet down carefully and wipe your face.

The rabbi sets a very careful hand on the back of your shoulder, like she doesn’t want to overwhelm you if contact might be too much.

“Let’s practice,” she says. “And then we can go to your mother to make sure you get a good healthy breakfast.”

It’s mortifying all over again, how much better you feel after you actually eat everything that Toriel’s set out for you for once. All through breakfast Asriel can’t stop smiling, and once the rabbi has left Toriel hugs you very gently, with such care you want to cry.

“I am so very glad,” is all she says, and “I have made an appointment with your therapist the day after tomorrow, so that you can talk to them if you need to after your day at temple.”

So she isn’t going to forbid you from going after all. It’s enough to make you feel silly for having worried about it in the first place.

Thoroughly exhausted by all this sound and fury so early in the day, you retreat to your bedroom and fling yourself back onto the unmade bed with a _flumph_ of finality—and less than a minute later realize that things _still_ aren’t quite over because Chara is here too, watching you from their desk.

They hadn’t been downstairs for breakfast. Most likely they’d been avoiding the rabbi—Chara’s more and more on edge around unfamiliar humans every year—but this _also_ meant that they hadn’t been available for you to get mad at. Now they are. So, “Fuck you,” you tell them as a matter of general complaint.

Chara’s shoulders go rigid for a while, and then they turn, evenly, to look at you sidelong. Their red eyes are hard. “I’ll spare you a list of all the outs we tried to give you and the intervention attempts you shrugged off,” they say. “Ree and I weren’t going to let you crash and burn over something this important to you.”

“Still,” you tell them, _“fuck you.”_

They get up to loom at the far end of your bed, too distant to actually be threatening. “What I did was pretty awful,” they agree. “It was mean and bad and had no respect for your privacy. I’m not sorry I did it, because _somebody_ had to put a pin in your quasi-anorexic downward spiral. What I _am_ sorry about is that pawing through your phone like a creep was the best solution I could come up with.”

You keep frowning at Chara. Their bristles, from what you can decipher, are about equal parts defiance and fear, a balance of believing themself justified while knowing they still aren’t, and worrying over what they might have ruined.

“You know me, Frisk,” they say, and get up onto the bed. They swing one knee over your legs so that they’re straddling your thighs. You still have room to pull your feet up if you don’t want to deal with them, and you could push them away too, which you know is on purpose. “I’m not a good person. I do bad things for good reasons, knowing the ends don’t necessarily justify the means. I can’t complain if you’re mad at me, I’d be pissed if you’d been the one to do this to me. Go ahead. It’s only fair. I don’t care.”

This even though they obviously do. “You tragic hero,” you tell them in a flat voice.

Chara makes a face. “Okay, you don’t have to _slander_ me, though.”

“Just saying. This is a really bad apology.”

“It’s not— _supposed to be an apology,”_ Chara says, spreading their arms wide, especially red in the face. “My accomplice isn’t present but I’ll include him too: Ree and I are bad people, and we love you. We’re bad people, so this is the best we could come up with to help, and we love you, so we couldn’t do nothing. It’s an imperfect situation. I promise this isn’t me feeling sorry for myself, I’m actually pretty pissed at you too, I just. It’d be cool if you could stop trying to destroy yourself to the point where we can’t not intervene, at least until we get more positive character growth as people, so we’re stuck in situations like this less. Thanks.”

“’M not making any promises,” you tell them. You could lift an arm up off the bed to flip them off but it doesn’t feel worth the effort.

“You should, actually,” says Chara. They scoot up the bed and sit flat on your lap; the warmth of their thighs against your sides and their… their behind on your waist is pretty distracting. “Meditate about it at temple tomorrow or something.”

 _“You_ meditate about it.”

“I don’t think I’ll ever be able to _do_ Yom Kippur,” they say flatly, scowling down at you.

“Why not?”

“You’re not the only asshole in this household whose birth parents liked to starve them, dipshit,” Chara tells you. Okay, fair point; you’d almost forgotten about that, you were so preoccupied with yourself. “There’s also the part where I’ve got crippling depression and am still lowkey convinced that every bad thing that happened to the monsters and you over the past century is my fault specifically and I deserve all the shit Asriel did to me and to us re: that debacle and I _don’t_ deserve anyone’s affection or high regard. If I spent the better part of twenty-four hours ruminating on every way I’ve fucked up in life I would _probably_ come out the other end strongly considering suicide. Yom Kippur’s effective for some people but personally I think there are healthier ways for me to build character.”

It’s a smart and practical conclusion, and such the opposite of the way you’ve been behaving that you can’t even acknowledge so out loud without sounding like an idiot. So you keep silent and let Chara’s statement stand.

“It’d be nice if at least _one_ of us could still do the whole High Holy Days properly,” Chara goes on at length, apparently satisfied with this. “So do me a favor and don’t screw yourself out of your ability to do that. At least let me experience Yom Kippur vicariously through you, here.”

Finally you have to laugh. “Still such a backseat driver.”

Chara shrugs, starting to smile. “I had too many strongly formative experiences in my youth,” they say primly. “I might just be stuck this way for good.”

“Work on that too maybe,” you say, and you reach out to take Chara’s hands and pull them down. They hesitate for just a moment, watching your face with a fear you will _always_ hate to see on them, but then they must not find whatever they’re checking for because they follow you down.

You close your eyes and raise your chin when they kiss you, one hand gentle on your cheek and the other over your chest, light, not bearing any of their weight. You can feel their back and stomach shaking with it, the effort of holding the pose anyway, and you bear them up with hands on their shoulder and their side. They take their time. Their warm weight in your lap is even more distracting now; you want to squirm, or pull them all the way down, but you can’t because the door is open. So you just go on like that, hands light over each other’s clothes, and enjoy it when they squeak, and let them make you make noise.

In five more minutes Asriel will come in to complain about not having been invited, which will at least be better than Toriel arriving to frown at you and remind you to be safe. And Chara will stop because their neck is tired from the angle anyway, and together they’ll unceremoniously frog march you down to eat lunch. And tomorrow you’ll go to temple with a full stomach, and you’ll be guilty for that, but you won’t have a mental breakdown or make yourself sick overeating later. And the day after that you’ll have to talk about food to your therapist, but that’s then, and this is now.

**Author's Note:**

> the prayer mentioned in the text can be found [here](https://reformjudaism.org/beliefs-practices/prayers-blessings/meditation-yom-kippur-one-who-cannot-fast) in its entirety, for the interested.


End file.
